Re-boot 2024

I’ve had a quiet 2024 so far cycling-wise. Now to re-boot and get cycling.

I completed the 6 week Efudix treatment on Sunday and my head is already calming down. There is a fair bit of dead skin to come off yet hopefully with the dreaded solar keratosis !

In the down-time I painted the camper trailer. I reported in the last blog that I had found a primer which helps attach paint to plastic. Not sure if it is working as adding the varnish seemed to remove some paint! Time and use will tell.

That’s two coats of acrylic followed by two coats of varnish. In places the paint has peeled slightly – e.g. when I used painters tape to get a straight line between yellow and green. The word on the prep can indicated the best results will be after 30 days so, for now, I am leaving the trailer alone. To “set”. Hopefully things will go well and it won’t immediately look like a trendy distressed paint job.

Will it allow “stealth camping”? I think not. Perhaps a camouflage net will be required.

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I have managed to get a few rides in to keep the leg joints from calcifying – mostly the out and back to Bishopsbourne. During one ride I removed some dead wildlife from the road. 2 possums, 1 Pademelon and one surprise. I spotted a dark lump in the road being fed on by a Swamp Harrier. The Harrier flew off and I moved to a safe position over the fence – a dead black swan!! That was a first.

Some more “happenings” :

Once our paddocks were full of poppies but no longer. The world needs far less medicinal opioids now the US has got its act together and is prescribing less because they are addictive (who knew?!). To replace the poppies we are noticing more plantings of oats and barley as well as corn (maize) and potatoes. Harvesting of oats is going well and it’s not unusual to come across the very large harvesters coming down the road towards you. They are very wide with very pointy parts.

Another section of the farming industry developing quickly is that of dairy. For the cyclist this means occasionally meeting a herd being ushered along the road. Some are quiet and wander past gazing at the bloke on the trike. Some are a bit more flighty and the “ushers” ask you to move to a safer place – I guess the problem may be that you could get accidentally squashed. 

A while back dairy farmers were being squeezed by the distributors and supermarkets making it a less than profitable industry. Things must have changed dramatically. I understand the new dairies tend to be the automatic types where the cows wander through and organise themselves – as and when they need to. That must represent a significant investment – I hope the milk contracts are firmer this time round.

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Now it’s time to get on with my 2024 New Year’s resolution – 77 kilometres each week until May when the requirement is 78 kilometres.

This week has begun well – Monday with the 30k Bishopsbourne out and back. This will continue.

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I am concerned that the 360 camera has been shutting down for unknown reasons. It needs testing. To start I ran it in “hyper-lapse” mode during the ride to Bishopsbourne to see if it stayed “on” for the trip out. It did. 

Although it doesn’t show up in the video, there was a lot of traffic going the other way that morning. Over the weekend there had been the Party in the Paddock music event at Carrick and the traffic seemed to be people returning home via country lanes instead of the main road to Hobart. The 4wd utes with tents on top didn’t slow down much nor did the drivers return my wave. I hoped there were no party drugs left in their system and that they noticed a lone triker. No near misses so all OK.

Here is the result: